IT IS 12 years since The Passion Of The Christ was released and Risen plays rather like a sequel, albeit tamer and unlikely to cause much of a tremor at the box office.

Risen explores the mystery of what happened to Christ’s body through the eyes of Clavius

A kind of Biblical detective story, with an unlikely dash of Jason Bourne-style action, the film explores the mystery of what happened to Christ’s body, as witnessed through the eyes of a worldly Roman tribune, Clavius (Joseph Fiennes). He is tasked with disposing of the corpse for his weary master Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) who is keen to put a lid on this Messiah business and move on in readiness for an upcoming visit from Caesar.

In terms of knowing what happens it’s not exactly edge-of-the-seat stuff. It’s no spoiler to reveal that Jesus, or Yeshua to give him the Hebrew name he goes by here, rose from the dead, nor that Christianity survived.

Still, a fair degree of intrigue and curiosity is aroused by the “hunt for the body” as Clavius tries to track down the disciples in search of answers; starting with the hapless soldiers who were on guard duty outside the tomb when Jesus rose from the dead and whose silence is bought by the Jewish elders desperate to quash suggestions Yeshua might be legit.

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A quietly spoken careerist with his eye on promotion to Rome and a comfortable future, Clavius finds himself increasingly troubled by the evidence that Yeshua might not be a fraud after all, notably in the form of powerful testimonies from his followers.

The first disciple he come across, Bartholomew (Stephen Hagan), is so happy clappy there are only two possible explanations – he’s high on drugs or has found Jesus. There is a certain fascination in witnessing the “ground zero” of Christianity and wondering how you personally would respond to the events, with Clavius as a kind of circumspect audience proxy.

“Marvellous recruiting tool,” he says drily after learning that Christianity promises “eternal life for everyone who believes”. There is also some droll humour of the “Jesus? No one will remember him” variety and Pilate’s exasperation is amusing.

If he really has risen from the dead, says Pilate, “I’ll kill him again.” Good luck with that.

Unfortunately the film fizzles out just when the conflict should be reaching a climax. Clavius and the disciples trip off to the Sea of Galilee but rather than build to a personal and political crisis for Clavius, the drama evaporates and we find ourselves on a kind of sun-baked spiritual retreat; all “amen brother” and pass the fish.

Still, a beefed-up Fiennes gives a sturdy, thoughtful performance, if a touch understated, and it’s handsomely mounted by director Kevin Reynolds, best known for action pictures like Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Waterworld.

I was expecting to feel many things watching director Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel High-Rise: shock, outrage, disgust, hilarity, exhilaration. What I did not expect was boredom.

Sadly, the ambitious 1970s-set production, in which the “inmates” of a state-of-the-art apartment block turn on each other in Lord Of The Flies-style savagery, is crushingly dull, despite the presence of man-of-the-hour Tom Hiddleston.

The star of current TV hit The Night Manager gives another excellent and quite sympathetic performance as neurologist Dr Robert Laing, newest inhabitant of the gleaming tower block, who observes the gradual disintegration of social order as frustrations with power outages gives way to territorial aggression and ultimately open warfare between the different floors (rich on top, lower orders at the bottom).

One of the issues, aside from a slack narrative that builds little tension or suspense, is the fact that it is all achingly dated. The 1970s setting, while faithful to the novel which was published in 1975, lends it an air of irrelevance.

Surely if Ballard were writing it today he would make it bang up to date? The idea of primitive man lurking beneath a veneer of sophistication is also old hat. If it were harnessed to a strong story, involving characters we were concerned about, or at least interested in or amused by (the lack of humour is another disappointment) then it would not matter so much.

It’s a pity because on paper the elements are intriguing (including cast members Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller) while Ballard’s preoccupations with the alienating effect of technology and sexual violence are as pertinent as ever. An overly reverent oddity, it feels like a failure of boldness and imagination – something Ballard himself was never accused of.

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10 Cloverfield Lane is a parallel story that occurs at a similar time as events in Cloverfield

Remember Cloverfield, the much hyped “found footage” monster movie produced by JJ Abrams in 2008? Now comes the significantly less hyped “spiritual successor”, 10 Cloverfield Lane, not so much a sequel but a parallel story that occurs at a similar time as events witnessed in the original.

It’s a clever way of establishing a potential Twilight Zone-style series whose hallmarks are narrative ingenuity and eerie happenings in a localised setting. Here the setting could not be more tightly focused: much of the story takes place in a rural underground survival shelter where a young woman, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), awakes after crashing her car in the dark.

Is the domineering man, Howard (John Goodman), who claims to have rescued her amid some kind of catastrophic event – possibly a biological attack – her saviour or a sicko captor spinning a lie to keep her grateful and subservient?

A fellow inhabitant, young local man Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) appears to confirm Howard’s story. Much of the fun lies in trying to second guess the story as Michelle’s own views of Howard and her situation change. Skilfully directed by first-timer Dan Trachtenberg, it’s overlong and doesn’t sustain the intrigue throughout but an explosion of tension towards the end results in a gripping, if preposterous, finale.